Unfortunately I have not been well enough to get out into the workshop for some months but the last series of spinal injections seem to be working so I need to make hay whilst the sun shines as it were. Sorry I have not been very productive recently..........

As an aside, if anyone knows where a set of plans for a keyway/broaching tool (similar the the Hemingway kit are please email me. Many thanks.

Mike

Unfortunately due to health and other issues, my only workshop time over the last few weeks has been used making a wooden trike for my wonderful granddaughter, Freya. Since she is only 11 months old she won't see her birthday present pictured above. When making it for real though I changed the front end to two wheels, and the rear end is a box to hold the electronics mention below. I have yet to put to transfers I have printed out on it (yellow spiral on the front wheels etc.) and will post a final picture in the next couple of days.....

I used Alibre 3D CAD to design it and fitted an electronic sound kit (from Maplins) so she can drive Mum and Dad crazy with the noise of a siren! Ho, Ho...

If you want a free copy of the plans then just email me but I am not writing the build up on this site which is for my first love, model engineering in METAL!!!!

Well I have managed to get into the workshop again and am in the middle of making a power feed to my own design for the RF25 milling machine I bought from Axminster tools some years ago. I will be writing up the design including drawings when I finally complete it. So far I only need to secure the bars and create a cover and lever (to engage and disengage the feed). So far in tests it works well and I have a shaky video to show how it works.

Don't worry about the driving dog since this was the first casting and I intend to make a pattern updated to take account of lessons during construction. The idea is that the motor will be engaged and released by use of a lever to slide the whole motor head in and out.  A picture or two should help understand....

Spent the last couple of days working on a couple of wood (Grrrrr!!!!) projects for my first granddaughter. The first was a wooden type puzzle freely available for a few pounds. However I decided to make one more individual instead.

My material choice was plywood and I did a lot of research into safe paints and finishes since everything at the moment gravitates to Freya's mouth!

I won't go into the why's and wherefores of how I made the puzzle suffice to say I did enjoy making the aluminium buttons for it the most. I sorted out a system fairly quickly to manufacture 12 of then buttons and was amazed to finish them in one session, without a single fault,  and for me that's a massive achievement. Indeed it could be a first!

Once I had finished the wooden puzzle I finished off a spinning top I had been making. If you want to read more about the spinning top (very addictive in the trial runs to make sure it worked - and again and again...)then visit my pen making website to read more.

Hopeful that tomorrow I will be recommencing work on the 16 valves I need to make for the pair of Seal engines. Perhaps I can bring a bit of  the luck I had making the buttons?

Hello all, unfortunately I have been unwell for the last few weeks and this looks like it will continue into the next few weeks at least so please bear with me and I hope to return to the workshop sometime soon. Why not have a dig around the blog or visit my main website which has more than 200 pages or more.

Mike

Today was the first session in the workshop for some time as my 'medical' difficulties have restricted my access to the workshop. Since I didn't trust myself to do anything of a 'critical' nature I just sat there smelling the oil as it were. Then I spotted an item recently bought and thought I couldn't do any damage if I were to 'play' with it so this short experience is all I can report to you at the moment.

I have a lovely certified granite block for marking out and keep it stored away in its box for safety. However on a recent visit to eBay I spotted a 'cheap' kitchen one. So I bought it and thought it would be a useful addition to my marking out section, for items that were less 'critical' than others.

It duly arrived and although it looked pretty good, I thought I would just run a dial indicator over the surface and see how true it was. Now bear in mind I work in imperial units and the measurements are very small, I was disappointed to find the DTI moved all over the place! Now to a chef 5 to 10 thousandths of an inch wont spoil his tomatoes, but it was too much for me. So if you think of buying one for the same reasons just bear in mind their surface is not as flat as it would seem. It was not only the range of difference but also where they were and I sought to find out if any section of the granite could be used. Of course the answer was no.

About to leave the workshop, I wondered if the underside was any better? It was not polished like the top but low and behold the underside is a lot better than the surface! So it must be the polishing process that makes dips. In the end I will be using it but not so much for marking out but as a 'relatively' flat surface for some assembly tasks perhaps.

Mine may not be representative of others but smooth in looks is not always smooth in surface.

Import Black Granite Surface Plate Local Pick Up Only    £79.10

SCULPTURE InOut BUILDING MAKING CARVING CASTING MARBLE METAL STONE MOLD PLASTER    £25.31

Handmade reclaimed pine solid wood kitchen units with granite work surfaces    £7,350.00

KITCHEN GOURMET MICROWAVE GRANITE HOT PLATE IN BOX USED 2 TIMES NO CORDS NEEDED    £15.59

Sorry, needed to get that out of my system!

Strauss on the first day

Today’s session in the workshop was very tense to begin with. Nothing to do with model engineering or making the adjustable handlebars for my brother in law, Steve, but all to do with England bowling out the Aussies at Lords! Well done to both sides and especially to Freddy.

Now back to the adjustable motorcycle handlebars. After setting up one block of aluminum the last session it was straight into drilling the centre with increasing drills before starting to use the home made boring bar. The benefits of digital readouts showed themselves again with the second project in a row. The recent pair of gears made for Thomas was all dimensioned in metric whereas this project has a mixture of sizes. For example the largest bore, which will be attached the motor cycle forks, is 45mm diameter and the smaller bore for the upright part of the handlebars is 7/8” or 0.8750”.

Bored to the 45mm diameter required by the forks

Because the bore needs to be correct in size and 90° to the top, time was taken to get it as near as possible to the 45mm. Now I am used to working in imperial and can visualise what 1 thou looks like it took me a little while to bring the final bore to 45.01mm which is within the tolerance I set myself.

Using telescopic bore measurement tool to get to final bore size

Getting the finished bore to 0.01mm isn't bad! The digital calipers don't go to that....

One lesson learned with using the first plate for the first serious work was when dismantling the work holding fixtures I thought I would loosen them and move the block around. In the end it was easier to remove all the brackets and start again because the position required for the second bore was completely different to the larger bore position. Next time I will just remove them and start again with a clean slate as it were.

Both bores now done on the first bracket. 90% of remaining metal still to be removed!

I was pleased that the fixtures held the piece securely to the face plate so that was a bonus. The next job to do on this particular bracket is to drill, then  ream, the 4 holes which will hold stainless steel rods that will be cross drilled and forms the clamping force.

I hesitated to change web hosts recently but my previous hosts stopped me updating my blog and websites without warning! It was only when I asked for help with an upload problem that I was told I had exceeded my memory and bandwidth allowance. No warnings, no communications!

I then searched around for a host that would not cause me problems with memory or bandwidth usage because it was only four months ago that I upgraded to a larger and more expensive plan that was supposed to see me through. So I live in hopes that my new hosts actually do what they say they do..........

It is very stressful changing hosts and this transfer has been the most difficult. I have learnt a lot more because I have had to but being a little unwell at the moment didn't help!

The only good new/bad news is you haven't missed much in regards to model engineering because I haven't been well enough to get out into the workshop, hopefully however I may be able to get an hour in tomorrow. If I do I will be leaving the power saw alone and will concentrate on getting the Fowler horn-plates and therefore rear wheels, secured to the boiler. She will then be standing on all four wheels which is where she should have been for December 31st 2008.

Anyhow as the Governor of California in the land across the sea would say......"I'll be back............."

I saw the USB microscope on the UK Maplin site for just under £50 (although I have seen them on eBay for around £22 now!) and it seemed worth buying to see if it had a use in the workshop. When it arrived I was very impressed with its performance and ease of use. It has the facility to make videos as well as still pictures very easily and shows up very well using the full screen on my spare laptop. After ‘playing’ with it for a while I decided to take it out into the workshop and see how it performed in that environment. I made two tests as it were. One was to see how well it would operate as an aid to centre drill an item on the milling machine. I didn’t take the time to make a stand mounting for the trial and just held it by hand. Because the item I was about to drill wouldn’t allow a centre drill to get there I used an ordinary drill with the disadvantage that all drills have without centre drilling first, that of wander. Video of a small 1/16th\" drill and starting it centre with a USB Microscope I was very surprised at the view I had and the 1/16^th drill shown in the video. You cans see quite clearly the drill wander straight away, but by watching the screen I could adjust the use of the quill until the drill was running true before continuing to drill the part and an early success. The second test was to use the microscope as an inspection aide and this area in particular may be where the greatest benefits will accrue.  The item I used for inspection was a camshaft I had just started working on following completion of the main machining. What I have to do is finish the profile by filing then sanding the cam lobes with fine grade wet ‘n’ dry paper. The first cam has had some filing done and a little sanding but the other cams had a lot more work needed. By using the microscope it was very easy indeed to see the work done on the first lobe compared with all the others. Video of a close look at a model camshaft for the Seal engine So what do I think of the Maplin sourced microscope?  Well I believe it does have a place in the model engineer’s workshop for areas where high accuracy is required. Whilst the camera is fairly robust I cannot see me using it all the time since the workshop environment could cause it damage, but if there is anything I want to see clearly I now have a tool that can operate between 20X and 200X to see what is what.  The next thing to do will be adapting the DTI stands to hold the microscope which does come with its own stand and clamp.  

DUAL VIEW COMPOUND MICROSCOPE W DIGITAL IMAGE CAMERA    £144.91

Digital USB Microscope by Traveler    £40.00

ORICO PNU3539 U3E ESATA USB30 Express Card High Transfer Speed 3 5 Gbps    £20.88

Touch Digitizer Panel Part For Samsung Behold T919 New    £2.43

US Keyboard for Dell E6400 Precision M2400 M4400 UK717    £10.94

Optoma Document Camera SXGA XGA with LED Lamp 9x Optical Zoom 2Mpl Ref DC300i    £398.44

Stereo Microscope 10x 20x 30x 60x USB Digital Camera 8W Bright Circular Light    £168.96

1900mAh Portable Mobile Rechargeable Power Charger for BlackBerry White    £6.36

200x Zoom 13 Mega Pixels 4 LED Light USB Digital Optical Microscope Magnifier    £18.03

celestron lcd digital microscope model44340    £159.99

Having completed the first Seal camshaft you can imagine my bitter disappointment when checking the profiles against the plans to find that they were miles out! No matter how many times I looked at them, turned them around and even when stood on my head, it wasn’t right!

I rechecked the methodology; re read Steve Huck’s article, to find out where I went wrong but all to no avail. The camshaft looked nice, but looking nice was not going to cut the mustard for a successful engine build, let alone the two Seal engines I am making!

When I couldn’t make any further progress in finding the answer I emailed Steve Huck and after many, many, emails, photo’s and explanations we came to find the answer.

Steve makes it perfectly clear in his article (reproduced on this website, by kind permission of Steve) that when making the cuts you turn the camshaft 5 degrees AWAY from you, i.e. clockwise. So what did I do? Well I thought that moving the cam 5 degrees towards me would make an easier cut and my 360 degree wheel had two scales on it (see photo). So when I made the 270 degree cut I should in fact have been making the 90 degree cut! So in fact I was 180 degrees out.

To make sure no one else makes the same mistake Steve has amended his cutting chart (see downloads) including a portion of the 360 degree wheel he uses, and makes it even clearer that the cut must be AWAY from you. Not that he didn’t say it clear enough in his article, no the fault was all mine. You may think this shows me up more than a little, well you would be incorrect to think such a thing.

Indeed it only goes to show my genius! Why? Well the two engines I am building will run contrary to each other so one needs in fact to run backwards. When analysing the pattern I had achieved Steve emailed me to say that the camshaft I had made was exactly what was needed to run an engine in the opposite direction.

So in fact what you may think of as a mistake was in fact planned on my part………….. to make the second engine  work…….tee hee…

So now I can make the two ‘proper’ camshafts with confidence. After all the research, and with the help of Steve to find out what happened to produce my ‘special’ camshaft, I have a far better understanding of a subject I thought I knew something about…….In the end, a good outcome.